New faces join UAE FA after toughest election in board's history

Abu Dhabi: A combination of veteran members and fresh new faces were elected to join the new UAE FA Board of Directors on Wednesday, with Yousuf Al Sarkal registering an emphatic victory in the race to be the new President.

The election, the toughest in the history of the UAE FA, took more than four hours, with the 30 clubs exercising their democratic rights to choose their representatives on the Board of Directors.

Al Sarkal won the main election with a 26-2 margin over his opponent, Abdullah Hareb, of Al Wasl.

"I would like to thank all the clubs who have supported me and I will sit with the two clubs who have not voted for me to know why they did not support me. Because I would like to do anything I could in the future to make all the clubs happy about our work and plans to improve the game." Al Sarkal said. Meanwhile, Hareb, who was the first to congratulate Al Sarkal, confirmed he will not appeal or protest the result of the election and wished the new board well.

Protest

The day's excitement started when members of the FA's general assembly — mostly from the 18 amateur clubs — protested about the new election book issued by the FA regarding clause 53, which says that "from the eight members elected in the new board as members, five should be from the professional clubs".

They protested because in the last assembly this clause was not included. So the neutral Elections Committee returned to the agenda of the last assembly and found that the clause was not included in the regulations, so it decided to cancel clause 53. While the victory of Al Sarkal was not a surprise, the way he achieved it was, as he had 26 of the 28 votes cast.

Mohammad Thani Al Rumaithi won, as expected, the most votes to win the position of vice-president. But while the majority were expecting Yousuf Hussain to win the second vice president seat, it went to Obaid Al Shamsi, who collected five more votes than Hussain.

Another round

In the election of the board members, Rashid Al Zaabi, Ganem Ahmad and Ali Al Ahmad were tied with 17 votes each. But only two of the three were needed to join the board so another round of voting was held, where Al Zaabi got 18 and Ganem 17 to leave Al Ahmad as the first substitute.

The surprise was that Mohammad Haji Khory, from Al Dhafrah, got the most votes in the membership elections, with other new faces like Mohammad Omar, the former Fifa Referee from Ajman, Al Dhaid's Saeed Al Tunaiji and Al Ain's Yousuf Khory joining the FA for the first time. Existing members Mohammad Abdul Aziz of Sharjah, Al Zaabi of Al Wahda, Ganem of Massafi and Fujairah's Nasser Al Yamahi were all kept on.